The City of Vista is moving forward in the process of competing with the county to buy Green Oak Ranch, the bucolic property just south of state Route 78 that is under consideration as the next location for a major investment in mental and substance use treatment infrastructure.
Walter Chung, Vista’s city attorney, reported out of a closed session Tuesday that the City Council took action behind closed doors.
“The City Council has authorized me to disclose that it has directed staff to obtain an appraisal of the Green Oak property,” Chung said, his statement drawing applause from a standing-room-only crowd that arrived to comment on the pending sale of Green Oaks Ranch even though it was not listed on the regular agenda for open session discussion.
One month ago, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to begin negotiations with the board of trustees that owns the property on Sycamore Avenue, seeking to buy 110 of the property’s 138 acres to be gradually redeveloped as a “regional campus for healing” that would include new buildings for substance use and mental health care which, according to a preliminary plan, could some day represent an investment of “up to $280 million.”
Though the bulk of the land — more than 63 acres — would be preserved as open space with hiking trails, the county’s vision for Green Oak has been met with fierce opposition from some in the surrounding community. Though the county has signaled its intent to keep treatment services on the property low key, not offering “drop in” appointments that have patients continuously coming and going from the facilities where services are provided, those who live in and around Vista’s upscale Shadowridge development, where Green Oak sits, are not in a trusting mood.
Jared Thompson, who serves on the board of Vista Little League, was among those who argued that the property, now home to summer camps and other community events, should continue to serve youth sports.
“Over the years, I’ve seen the park space and the baseball fields disappear,” Thompson said. “They get replaced with these little wooden cubes where people live and they drive their little metal cubes to work where they sit in concrete cubes.”
Adding that he has been “a veteran of a local police department” for 18 years, Thompson predicted that adding the services that the city specifies to Green Oak Ranch would be devastating to surrounding neighborhoods.
“As a boot on the ground with over 10 years of experience working specifically with the unhoused and those struggling with sobriety, I can anecdotally and empirically show the adverse impacts of the type of facilities proposed on the surrounding community,” Thompson said. “I know firsthand, violent crime will go up, drug use sales (and) homelessness will go up in the immediate area.
“I have not seen any facility in the county where, honestly, this hasn’t been the case.”
Karin Allison was among those who made the case that Green Oak is already doing a lot to help individuals and families. She said she, her husband and their three children were homeless, but managed to rent a spot in Green Oaks’ RV park, which she said houses about 30 families and roughly two dozen children.
“We find it unthinkable and unacceptable that we all would stand to be practically made homeless,” Allison said.
She added that a government project should not displace residents.
“We are among the population who, in spite of working full time, cannot afford adequate housing in North County,” Allison said. “We have been on the Section 8 waiting lists since December 2015; if housing is to be built for mentally ill homeless people who need recovery sites, it should be done on land that is not presently inhabited by anybody else.”
But others such as Sandi Leyva, a Vista resident who said her neighborhood is adjacent to Green Oak Ranch, pointed out that trustees are working to meet the wishes of the late Arie de Jong, who wanted it to be used for “transforming lives.”
“I think people are forgetting that the trustees of Green Oak Ranch will be carrying out the deceased’s wishes; there will be a transformational healing place at Green Oak Ranch whether the neighbors like it or not,” Leyva said in an email. “That’s not the question.
“The question is how to move forward and find the best stewards of the land going forward so that its new purpose will integrate beautifully with the neighborhood.”
A public forum to further discuss the property is scheduled for June 30 at 12:30 p.m. in the Morris B. Vance Community Room at the Vista Civic Center complex.
